As an increasing number of applications and services are being made available over networks such as the Internet, an increasing number of content, application, and/or service providers are turning to technologies such as cloud computing. Cloud computing, in general, is an approach to providing access to electronic resources through services, such as Web services, where the hardware and/or software used to support those services is dynamically scalable to meet the needs of the services at any given time. A user or customer typically will rent, lease, or otherwise pay for access to resources through the cloud, and thus does not have to purchase and maintain the hardware and/or software needed.
In this context, many cloud computing providers utilize virtualization to allow multiple users to share the underlying hardware and/or software resources. Virtualization can allow computing servers, storage device or other resources to be partitioned into multiple isolated instances that are associated with (e.g. owned by) a particular user. This can enable various users to run their applications remotely, using on the resources of the cloud computing provider. However, providing a conventional virtual computing environment has a number of limitations. For example, users are typically not provided the same level of control over the virtual resources allocated to them as they would have if they physically owned those resources. As a result, customers of a cloud computing provider are unable to customize their applications and services to the degree that may be desired.